Quote:
Originally Posted by amead
So I'm sure a lot of people here have been in situations where you're connecting through a major airport which has/had some weather issues that day. You end up finally boarding your flight, to say, LaGuardia, and then end up leaving the gate and sitting on the tarmac.
The pilot invariably comes on saying that ATC is metering traffic and that you'll get an "update" in 45 minutes or something.
Is it true that you leave the gate so that "just in case" there is an earlier wheels up time available, you can get it because you are ready to go?
Had a misconnect after hearing the crew talk about having a certain wheels up time that we'd never realistically make, then got stuck on the tarmac and couldn't deplane to head back home for the night and try again the next day - resulting in a fun overnight stay in a dirtbag Queens hotel.
With how computerized and pre-planned flights are with ATC, shouldn't there be a better way than having flights wait on the tarmac? I know some people really flip out when this happens...
Ground stops and delays getting airborne are right at the top of my list of things that make my teeth grind. Sometimes it's obvious what the reason is. Widespread thunderstorms in the northeast will wreak havoc on airline schedules and you may experience lengthy delays on the ground even though you look out the window and see blue skies. That's because your flight path will take you into the weather and no one is going that way.
Up in the cockpit, we're often as frustrated as you are. We get information through an eye-dropper it seems. We'll push off the gate after being told by ATC that there are no delays, only to be told by the same controller minutes later that "La Guardia has shut down. Expect an update in 30 minutes." I've even had excessive delays with no weather in the area or along the route! Sometimes the approach controllers just get saturated and they stop accepting aircraft over the arrival fixes. This results in holding patterns for planes in the air, and ground stops for those that haven't yet taken off.
The Passenger Bill of Rights, which was a politically popular piece of legislation aimed at avoiding excessive time sitting in an airplane (or "being held hostage" as many people characterized it), has also had an impact. Since there are onerous fines for being off the gate for three hours ($22,500 per passenger, payable to Uncle Sam), we start back to the gate well before three hours and give up our place in line. (See
this blog I wrote for Air & Space Magazine's web site on this subject.)
The only thing we can do is pass along the straight dope as we get it. Unfortunately, there are still many of my colleagues who don't see the need to talk to the passengers. I find that if I'm open and honest about what's going on, the people in back are less likely to mutiny.
One of the reasons they don't like to deplane the passengers is that the situation often changes at a moment's notice. I've can remember a case at DCA where we were off the gate and told to expect an "update" in 45 minutes. So we shut down our engines to save fuel. The engines had barely spooled down when the controller told us that the ground stop had just been lifted and we needed to be airborne in the next five minutes. There was a flurry of activity to get both engines restarted and everything ready to go.
If this had happened at the gate with passengers off the plane, there is no way we could board them and get going quickly. When passenger deplane, they head for the Starbuck's, Cinnabon, bathroom, etc. Getting them all back in like herding kittens.